This article is all about getting what you want next year.
Making and achieving goals.
Before we start talking about goals – did you ever read ‘The Secret’? The theory is great isn’t it – you think of what you want then you close your eyes tight and dream about it and then, ‘ping’, it appears. Think of this as your underpinning motivation for goal setting, if you are consciously aware of what you want, then your whole being can recognise it when it’s in front of you.
I once did a treasure map and put on it a photo of India and next to it an easel. I had dreams of standing at the window of my apartment, painting the view of the palm tree outside. I then set off for a coffee. On route I pass a shop I’ve been to hundreds of times before, but I see they have saris in the window. At the coffee shop the group opposite are chatting about their recent trip to India… on the walk home (now this will freak you out, as it did me) there was an easel on the footpath. Just standing there! Waiting for its new owner the way items do on the streets of this great transient city.
Now, I used to think ‘the universe’ just popped it there for me and now I realise that no, that it would have been there whether I wanted it or not. In fact, those dresses might have been there for months and there might have been an ‘India’ tour group every Saturday in that coffee shop, but previously I was unaware, it wasn’t in my consciousness.
You see the belief is according to NLP- Neuro Linguistic Programming – that we delete an enormous amount of information that comes our way, (around 11 million bits per second, give or take a few) and so quite simply we are walking around in a trance with so much going on around us that we are not consciously aware of. (If you can get your hands on it, watch Todd Sampson ‘Redesign your Brain’ that was on the ABC a few months back.)
The great news is – the moment you know what you DO want and focus on it, you see success!
This means the resources to set your goals are already out there – in your path – the moment you make it known that’s what you want, and the key part – (what ‘The Secret’ missed out) the moment you realise ‘you need to take action’ is when you can start achieving the success you desire.
So, here is our quick guide to GOAL setting.
- Take time to create a GOAL.
- Make it SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timed)
- Write it down (this cements in your mind that you want it).
- Break it down into chunks – so in order to achieve this goal in a year what would I need to do in 3 months and then next, etc.
- Be at cause of your actions, hold yourself accountable. Adopt the thinking that ‘I cause everything in my life’.
Just the process of thinking about something, quite frankly means it’s already started to happen.
